It’s the one place where you can openly discuss dating and pickup with other similar minded people. It’s the one event where you can meet and talk directly to the gurus you’ve learned and read from on the internet for years!

I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I learned a lot from it when I was still exploring the Pickup Community.

It’s thanks to the PUA Summit that I connected with Johnny Wolf, Vince Kelvin, Adam Lyons and other really nice guys!

This year, they had some of the big names again: David Wygant, Adam Lyons, Speer, Asian Playboy, Hypnotica, Mehow, Daniel Rose, Bad Boy, Brad P., DJ Fuji and many more! They even had Kosmo speak there. If you forgot, he’s the season 2 winner of Mystery’s reality TV show “The Pickup Artist” on VH1.

No matter what you are expecting from a convention like this, you won’t be disappointed. If you need a few new techniques to add to your arsenal of seduction skills, many of the speakers will share with you what they know. If you wanted to ask some of them about your personal situation, you can get some quick Q&A in after each presentation. If you just wanted to wrap yourself around the mindset behind how to be a cool and attractive guy, you’d get that too!

Woman Half Naked = Good Ad 😛

It’s at events like the PUA Summit that you can find out for yourself who’s the real deal. Which guru do you connect and relate to the most? How do you like their vibe? How do you like how they carry themselves? This is where you can find out if you really want to be like them, if you really want to continue learning from them. Honestly, some of these gurus don’t have very good looking girlfriends.

Worse, I don’t know if I would consider some of these women “high quality” (in the sense of… what do they bring to your life outside of sex and/or being your arm candy).

But again, I’m not judging here. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

The PUA Summit has matured a lot since its first year in 2007. This time, there’s no strippers dancing at intermissions, no smoke machines and crazy lights. There are useful booths from various vendors that are meant to add value to your life. For example, you can get a relaxing massage… or you can talk to Erin Stelzer, the fashion consultant who’ll give you tips for a quick image make-over.

There were also a lot more press coverage this time around. I met a few people who were there on assignment to hopefully have a story for their respective newspaper or blog. The other great thing about this year’s PUA Summit was… gasp… there were some women in attendance this time around

Isn’t that why you are trying to learn pickup in the first place?

On the other hand, I hate it.

I feel that for most guys out there, the PUA Summit is way too much information to digest at once. There’s a lot of techniques discussed here… and for most of guys who just want a little helping hand in finding a girlfriend, it’s too much. They aren’t ready for that. Not everyone is trying to be the next Don Juan.

It starts with you developing some basic personality skills. Can you engage a girl in a way that intrigues her, that makes her curious about you? Then it continues with: can you listen attentively enough to her to relate to her and really make her feel special? And it ends with… can you carry yourself normally, casually (aka in a non-creepy, non-threatening way), confidently and powerfully in the way you walk and talk?

It’s really not that hard when you understand the basics, when you are more honest with yourself and when you really learn to respect the man in you, including the sexual creature in you. Women feel that! Women know when you are turned on by them. But you’ve got to do it in a way that’s congruent and genuine.

When you do, that’s when women respond to you positively.

You’ve got to build that ability to emotionally impact her by your personality, by your lifestyle, by who you are. You’ve got to develop yourself into the guy she can see herself with, to which she can feel inspired by.

In the end, attraction is a mirror. You’ve got to develop yourself into that powerful and wonderful man that I know you are inside if you want to attract the caliber of woman I know you want.

So the question I ask now is… is it something you can learn through the mastery of an endless set of techniques? Is there a magic trick you can use to get the woman you want?

I sure hope that’s not what you were looking for from the PUA Summit because you’d get that… but you may be chasing smokes and mirrors.

The great thing about the PUA Summit is you’ll get a lot of ideas on how you can improve all the things I’ve mentioned above, but like in any other convention, the abundance of information may confuse you more than help you. In addition, are you really going to take the time to apply what you’ve learned? The PUA Summit gives you a great forum for you to find the knowledge AND the people to help you get where you want but if you aren’t going to apply it, what does it matter?

Take in as much as you can but don’t get bogged down by all the little details. The worst thing you could do leaving the PUA Summit is to try to over-analyze everything you’ve learned. Put into practice what resonated most with you and see how it works.

As much as I see the benefit the PUA Summit offers to many men, I can’t see it ever becoming mainstream. After coming back for the 3rd year in a row, I still wouldn’t tell my friends that I’m going to a PUA Summit.

As soon as I entered the room, I saw a sea of men dressed in variations of Affliction style of t-shirts and jeans. Lots of guys were dressed as if they were bad-asses. Lots of guys were dressed as if they were going out at night. Lots of them had bling bling that made no sense at all.

For Christ’s sake, this is day time!!! Who dress like that? If I didn’t know better, I would have called them douchebags. Some of these men were definitely trying too hard to be cool… and honestly, that didn’t make me want to really associate myself with them.

In short, I recommend the PUA Summit to anyone who’s a little curious about the Pickup Community. I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s an aspiring Pickup Artist. Know what you want out of it, go to it, get it and get out.

However, for anyone who’s a little bit more mainstream, who just wants to know a few things or two about women, the PUA Summit would be too much and would turn them off more than truly help them.